


everything except an ashtray

by notmyrevolution



Series: bedside tables [1]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-28
Updated: 2013-04-28
Packaged: 2017-12-09 19:07:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/776970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notmyrevolution/pseuds/notmyrevolution
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s solid wood, but the varnish is in terrible condition. </p>
<p>(everything Grantaire's bedside table says about him, and a few things it doesn't.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	everything except an ashtray

It’s solid wood, but the varnish is in terrible condition. Scratched and scuffed, stained with paint and stripped with paint-remover, circles where hot mugs have sat countless times over and the whole thing is cast in a dull grey light because his room never gets the morning sun ( _if he moves he’ll get a room that does because even though he hates sun and mornings and especially the two fucking **together**  he longs to see golden curls illuminated like a fucking halo) _and not that it would matter anyway since it’s raining.

Three empty beer bottles  _(A quiet night in)_  and a half empty bottle of whiskey that may as well be  _glued_  to the table for how permanent it’s fixture is there. These don’t get acknowledged, they exist and that’s all anyone needs to know. 

Two coffee mugs, both his. One half-empty and stale, the other full and hot, steam rising off the surface and mingling with the smoke of the day’s second cigarette. The mugs don’t match. None of his dishes do. He collects and breaks so what’s the point, really?

A lighter, Zippo because he’s pretentious, scratched and engraved ( _“Really? ‘I am wild’?” “Are you upset I didn’t get ‘be serious’ on the other side?”_ ) rests on top of a cigarette packet, and most people assume he rolls his own but that takes time and  _effort_. He likes his cigarettes post-sex, early-morning, any-time, resting between two charcoal smudged fingers on his left hand while his right unlocks a phone with a background that is absolutely  _not_  the naked, curved back of a Greek god walking the earth. He likes to be able to reach and  _take_ because he is  _impatient_.

No ashtray. ( _“That’s disgusting.” “No one asks you to sleep here.”)_

Two sticks of charcoal, wrapped in plastic. Two clean paintbrushes, balanced together like chopsticks. He may not care about anything else in his life ( _except him_ ) but he cares about his art so he’ll at least fucking  _try_ to take care of the supplies. 

A pen but no paper because why write on paper when he can note his thoughts between shoulder blades that should carry wings but  _don’t_ and maybe one day he should draw

A phone, expensive ( _a gift_ ), no cover because even though he should he still doesn’t give a shit because he thinks “if it breaks I’ll just replace it” but never fucking  _does_.

Sometimes a book. Bent spine, dog-eared, soft, because he likes them to look well-read and loved. He likes everything to look loved. 

( _Does he look loved?)_

It’s all his though, all of it. At some point he’ll get one for the other side but he’ll never use it because he likes everything just _there_ , where he can reach it and see it. It’s chaos in an eighteen by eighteen inch square of wood but that doesn’t matter because it’s  _his._ Nearly everything he can call  _his_ is on there, all the parts that make him and are integral to him ( _except him, tangled in the sheets next to him but can he really call him his?)_.

It’s his, and it’s solid, and really, that’s all he needs.


End file.
